How much do you think about your own development?

A reply posted by AZuzack got me thinking:

GMO, we could start a whole new thread from that post.  QA has to be stubborn and yet flexible.  We have to have integrity to prevent harm but make risk based decisions that may (or may not) allow some harm.  We have to make one-size-fits-all regulations into functional practical programs.   

When I started in the food industry, the only real requirement was to be a scientist. 

There were few requirements to be good influencers. You didn't have to be a strategist or a leader. You could stick to your specialism and that was that.

Now it's not the same. You don't get to be that narrowly focused. When I go to some factories, I'm now increasingly seeing some Technical people who have not adapted as part of the problem rather than the solution.

Back in the day 20+ years ago, systems were poor. These great Technical people have worked hard on improving those systems and now, it's pretty rare to go into a factory and find they have poorly designed processes.

Problem is on the implementation of those processes. The engaging people, influencing them, working with people who are very different, persuading, working cross functionally... Then build that into the fact that we're often sales people in disguise having to keep technical people at retailers happy on top of the "day job". And honestly? Firstly I see a lot of understaffing in this area, especially in retailer branded where the manning to workload in commercial is often double that of Technical. But also what I see is technical people who cannot adapt to these softer skills and why would they? What they've been praised for, built their careers around etc, well that's not the job anymore.

Some of these people then become blockers to change. Who, for example, can't see why procedures aren't being complied with in the factory and start finger pointing without seeing the procedures designed by their team are completely unworkable (happens surprisingly often). Or describe situations where they're not supported by other functions in food safety but were nowhere to be seen on the last health and safety or lean event. Or who struggle with maintaining retailer relationships when they've not had the decades of training salespeople get and aren't just built that way to enjoy schmoozing. 

I think we see the impact of it on here sometimes. I've been rightly called out for it, a certain intransigence or robustness in replies which can be misinterpreted as rude. I never think it's meant that way, just years of science training and having to fight your corner in industry probably didn't make us great at gently persuading, at least not in text.

So it made me wonder. How much are you and your colleagues seeing this as an issue? Working on the so called "leadership soft skills" as part of CPD? Or are you seeing Technical development as more important? How much do you recommend this to your teams?